Jakarta – Indonesia's government will ask an independent commission to look into possible human-rights abuses by a major US mining company in West Papua province, a minister said.

Hasballah Saad, the country's first human-rights minister, said the commission will likely begin in June to probe incidents of rights abuses. He said Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc. would be included in the investigation.

"We will ask the independent commission to prepare a formal report of these abuses, including [actions by] Freeport," Mr. Saad said. "Based on that," he added, "we will send the case to trial."

Human-rights activists have accused Freeport, which runs the world's single largest copper and gold deposit mine in West Papua, of providing vehicles and facilities to Indonesian security forces fighting separatists from the Free Papua Organization.

In New Orleans, company spokesman Bill Collier denied allegations of rights violations and said the company is prepared to cooperate with investigators. "As a company, we've taken a very strong position in support of basic human rights and we condemn human rights violations wherever they occur." Until last year, Indonesia's army ran the province with an iron hand.

Thousands of locals were killed and tortured during a series of anti-insurgency operations.

Freeport has been active in the region, about 4,000 kilometers east of Jakarta, since the 1960s. The company has long been dogged by controversy and allegations of collusion with former President Suharto, who resigned in May 1998 after 32 years of autocratic rule.

The independent commission will include nongovernmental organizations based in West Papua, as well as community leaders, Mr. Saad told a gathering of foreign journalists. Mr. Saad said it would be impossible to bring to trial all recent cases of human-rights violations. "We have no real capabilities to follow all these problems of human-rights abuses through the courts," he said. "So many places in Indonesia have human-rights abuses."